With many new business owners and webmasters exploring SEO
for the first time, this series of articles looks to assist with the basic information needed to start a search engine marketing
campaign.

In the first part of the series, we will discuss the importance of a solid foundation. When starting any SEO campaign it is tempting to leap straight in and start tweaking meta tags and
changing text. However, like any successful marketing strategy,
it is vital to ensure that you know whom your audience is and
how to reach them. In the same way traditional advertising
agencies survey their demographic audience, search engine
marketers must ensure that their SEO campaign targets the
correct keywords or search phrases. Target the wrong search
phrase and you could end up with great search engine rankings
for keywords that have no search requests. A few hours now spent ensuring that the correct search phrases are targeted, can save months of useless optimization.

Brainstorm

When you started your company you would have been foolish to
stubbornly press ahead with your products without first testing
the market to see if there was a demand. Likewise, when you
start out on your SEO campaign it is important to brainstorm
search phrases that are likely to bring qualified visitors to your website. Sit down with your co-workers and business partners
and discuss which keywords are relevant to the products and
services you offer. Compile an initial list of 5-10 search phrases that you feel best represent your company and which you
believe people would type into a search engine when trying to
find you. Consider the following factors when brainstorming:

Expanding Your Keyword List

Once you have completed your brainstorming and have compiled
your list of 5-10 core keywords, it's time to move on and expand
that list. At this point, you need to turn to the search engines
themselves and research which search phrases are actually being typed into Google, Yahoo, MSN et al. While few search engines will openly tell you which search phrases are the most often searched, there are a couple of very useful tools you can use to expand your list.

The first and most well known, is the Overture Search Suggestion Tool (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/).

This great little research tool is primarily for the use of Overture PPC users and, if you have ever embarked on a PPC campaign with Overture, you will no doubt have come across it. While useful, and free, it does have limitations.

If you are serious about your SEO campaign, you will consider a
subscription to WordTracker (http://www.wordtracker.com/) to be a worthwhile investment. The biggest advantage with WordTracker is that it uses Meta-Crawlers when sourcing search phrase frequencies. This eliminates inflated search phrase frequencies from Overture users checking their own rankings and thus artificially increasing the popularity of certain phrases. In
addition, WordTracker offers the following advantages:

Determining Competition

Once you have identified possible additions to your search phrase list, you must research further to determine if there is a good chance you will achieve your prized top search engine ranking or if the competition for that phrase is already saturated. There are two ways to do this:

Selecting Your Keywords

By now, you should have an expanded list of search phrases to
target, taken from either Overture or WordTracker. In addition,
you should also have a good idea as to the competition for each
of those keywords, whether you used the KEI or Google format.
Now is the time to start selecting the search phrases that will
form the foundation for a successful SEO campaign. Ok, deep
breath, we're almost there.

When selecting the keywords to target, there are many factors
you must take into consideration. You will no doubt have your
own unique considerations, but you must also take into account
the following:

Once you have asked yourself the above questions, it will become easy to narrow down your list to the main search phrases that you wish to target. When doing so, remember that you should not try and target every selected search term on your index page. Identify the most relevant page for your selected keywords and use that page for targeting rankings.

In Summary

When researching search phrases and targeting keywords for your SEO campaign, it is important to follow the steps above. Research your industry, talk to your potential customers and make use of the themes within your website. In addition, consider these final tips:

Both Overture and WordTracker use historical data when displaying search phrase frequencies and neither archive more than two months back. Therefore, you must know your industry and account for any seasonal or other trends.

I hope you have found the above useful. This series is designed
to help the beginner, but I hope a few experienced SEO marketers will find something fresh to consider.

Andy Beal is Vice President of ProRanking.com, specialists in
professional search engine optimization. Highly respected as a
source of search engine marketing advice, Andy has had articles
published around the world and has spoken at Danny Sullivan's
Search Engine Strategies conferences.